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Recycle – Floppydisks
- codevark 2mo ago[dead]
- NickNaraghi 2mo agoThese used to be 50 cents a piece at my high school library. What a joy it was to have a tiny simple way to transport essays (and pixel art and other fun things) to and from school and amongst all the school computers.
- mrkpdl 2mo agoYes! But beware the one computer in the second row that wrecks your disk, learned one by one, the hard way.
- mysterydip 2mo ago“thip…thip…ERRNT ERRNT ERRNT”
- millerm 2mo agoHey, I know that sound. Hah!
- vunderba 2mo agoRelatedly, I was recently digging through the attic at my family’s home and came across a 3.5" disk containing a bunch of QBASIC programs I’d written in the early ’90s. Despite sitting for decades in a non–climate-controlled attic, it loaded up just fine when I plugged it into a USB floppy drive. Honestly, looking back at code from 30+ years ago felt more like an archaeology expedition. Also how many other kids also went around brandishing 3.5" floppies like a weird gun, "cocking them" by pulling back the shutter and letting it go with a satisfying snap?
- Waterluvian 2mo agoIf you loosen the metal cover just right you can make it go absolutely sailing across a computer lab (or any room, I bet).
- recursive 2mo agoDefinitely can still feel the spring sensation.
- mister_mort 2mo agoI definitely remember doing that as a kid, and I remember bending the thin metal off some broken ones. Whatever brand I was using allowed that metal to work a bit like a spring, you could launch it by compressing it. (Sorta like the frogs you find in Christmas bonbons.)
- qiqitori 2mo agoA while ago I learned that very early versions of 3.5" floppies didn't have the auto shutter mechanism and you had to open and close the shutter manually. (I think that was probably just used on some Japanese Sony machines.)
- vunderba 2mo agoInteresting! I tried to find a demonstration of the manual shutter. This is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. Apparently, it was one of the earliest Sony models to feature a semi-automatic shutter. https://youtu.be/H67IfAyb_4c https://youtu.be/H67IfAyb_4c
- clsec 2mo agoI used to use them, and 8" disks, daily with some of the first CAD/CAM engraving machines I used at work in the early 90's.
- ColdStream 2mo agoLooking back over any code older than 12 months is always like archaeology, at least if it is my poorly documented tech-debt ridden nonsense.
- phendrenad2 2mo ago"Add to cart" does nothing. Wonder if they actually sell floppies, or just shred them to keep pushing us towards modern technology.
- Joel_Mckay 2mo agoFor old equipment, there are very good alternative methods =3 https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy
- JK-Swizzle 2mo agoIf losing floppies pushes you towards modern technology, I don’t think you have to worry. You are still 4+ generations behind. If you think those Zip disks are great, just wait until you hear about DVD-RW!
- M95D 2mo agoMount Rainier DVD-RW! but here are so few of them...
- nticompass 2mo agoWhat do you mean? I was able to click "add to cart" on their website and was taken to a PayPal page to check out. I think the issue is on your end (some type of ad/tracking/cookie blocker messing up the page). I've bought many floppy disks from these guys and I can say that they are 100% legit. Also, destroying old technology is no way to progress into the future.
- alnwlsn 2mo agoThey do sell, I've bought from them before.
- charlieyu1 2mo agoI think they brag about being the only seller of floppies and it’s been a few years at least?
- drivers99 2mo ago
- fuzzfactor 2mo agoNow I've got a pack of old floppies that are outgassing :0 I have no other explanation. This is an almost-full box of miscellaneous floppies in one of the original cardboard trays of 30 from Office Depot. I've got kilos more floppies in different closets but these are good ones I selected a few years ago that all passed SCANDISK. Now this one little box is in an old ziploc bag in the office and it keeps self-inflating. At first I thought it was unusually low barometric pressure one day but I keep squeezing out the air rain or shine and it keeps on puffing back out by itself. Something I really didn't expect. If I did still own my own laboratory, I'd tell you what kind of gas it was by now though ;)
- userbinator 2mo agoAre you sure it's not just the bag attempting to return to its original shape? They are also not truly airtight, so there might be some sort of osmosis effect too. The possibility of mold growth may also be considered.
- fuzzfactor 2mo agoThese do seem all within the range of possibilities. The bag is old and imperfect, and I don't think it is completely airtight either. Not as much from permeability of the polymer but phyical wear & tear too. I smelled the exhaust when I deflated it the last few times and it is very faint but industrial. Doesn't smell like mold but organisms could still be hidden somewhere breaking down plastic or additives. Which may or may not consume oxygen. Osmosis I have been considering too, if fairly high molecular weight breakdown products are gradually emerging into the gas phase, with the bag way more permeable to atmospheric gases, maybe the atmosphere is forcing its way in and builds slightly higher partial pressure than ambient as a molar dilutive effort. This is a good time to put the floppies in a brand new bag and see what happens, the experiments never end ;)
- stavros 2mo agoHm, if there's anything of note in the floppies, maybe archive them? There are some USB devices that will read and store the actual magnetic flux values, for max fidelity.
- soupspaces 2mo agoWith 46 of them you can make a nice bag https://www.instructables.com/Floppy-Disk-Bag/ https://www.instructables.com/Floppy-Disk-Bag/
- ayaros 2mo agoA couple years ago I got a bunch of recycled low density DS/DD disks here. It was a good deal; yeah I had to clean em off a bit, and I also re-labeled them with some newer labels. But a good deal nonetheless. I approve.
- grahamburger 2mo agoMy son told be today that he wants to buy a floppy disk drive because one of the bands he likes started releasing singles on 3.5" floppies. What a time to be alive.
- jnovacho 2mo agoWhat band is that? Also how do they do that? Just heavily compressed mp3?
- eps 2mo agoHere's an example - https://remute.bandcamp.com/merch/limited-expansion-pack-35-floppy-disk https://remute.bandcamp.com/merch/limited-expansion-pack-35-... I'd guess they use .mod files - instruments and tracks, rather than digitized audio.
- achairapart 2mo ago1.44Mb should be enough even for a compressed but still decent quality MP3(~128kb) or AAC(~112kb) short track (1:30+, I think), then you can also reduce audio quality and gain more time based on music styles (lo-fi, etc).
- hulitu 2mo agoMP3(~128kb) or AAC(~112kb) are alrwady reduced audio quality.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- grahamburger 2mo agoI'm pretty sure this is the one he wants: https://supercassetteband.bandcamp.com/merch/ouroboros-floppy-disk https://supercassetteband.bandcamp.com/merch/ouroboros-flopp...
- ajxs 2mo ago
- hs586 2mo agoThis is definitely not recommended but when I was a kid we also used floppy disk films to look at solar eclipses. That was far from the most dangerous thing we did in 90s in a post-Soviet country. To this day, when I read or think about a solar eclipse, I have a visual image of floppies! My first instinct seeing this on HN was “is this because there is a solar eclipse tomorrow?”
- runtime_lens 2mo ago[flagged]
- SillyUsername 2mo agoSadly they don't sell Amsoft 3 inch disks, I enquired a few years ago.
- londons_explore 2mo agoI had a huge stack of ancient mixed floppies and sold them for a dollar each on eBay. Interestingly most buyers didn't care about HD, DD etc. I suspect they went into art projects.
- rbtms 2mo agoLooking through their website, it seems they are not recycling them in the usual sense of the word, but reusing them. That is, they reformat and resell them at a discount (66%) that of new ones. Which is fine, I guess, if they're just laying around your house, but it's not like they're making new things with the materials which is what the word recycling usually implies.
- alnwlsn 2mo agoThis is correct. I have bought some disks from him before (also he is tomdotstar on EBay) and they come as ordinary used disks with a new label stuck on top. Supposedly each one is tested; all the ones I got worked and looked to be in good condition, so I guess so. It is interesting to see some of the old labels underneath the new one - most of mine were driver disks or "setup disk 5 of 19" or similar.
- cormorant 2mo ago"Reuse" ranks higher than "recycle" in terms of best things to do with an item, if it's reasonable to do so.
- Cockbrand 2mo agoFor a brief period of time, CD ROMs were already a thing, and people still had 5.25" diskettes lying around. So someone came up with the idea to put a self-burned CD into the plastic shell of a floppy disk, and I actually found that quite cool. Also: wow, this shop still has 8" floppy disks!
- lupodevelop 2mo agoI had a huge stack of ancient mixed floppies!
- Theodores 2mo agoIn twenty years time, will there be a secondary market in random USB sticks? I have a vast quantity of random USB sticks from clearing out my father's house, keeping them just in case something needed, nothing was. Rather than take the effort to dispose of them, I am thinking of holding on to them for the retro scene of 2050.
- II2II 2mo agoIt's hard to say. From a vintage computing perspective, possibly. The only question is whether they will work. Oddly, I have found USB sticks to be less reliable than floppy disks. (Odd because I would think that semi-conductor memory would last longer than a ferrous coating glued to a plastic substrate that is dragged along both the read/write head and the shell and is known to be susceptible to mould.) Other uses, I just don't know. Floppy disks have a well defined appearance that means they are iconic. (Sometimes literally so!) USB sticks vary so much in size and appearance that it will be difficult to earn the iconic status. Floppies also have more to work with when it comes down to arts projects.